Out of aluminum, plastic and wood, students make rover for Smithsonian

Students who worked on the full-scale model rover show it off at the Ithaca Sciencenter, June 19. They are, from left, Matt Siegler '03, Miles Johnson '02, Ithaca College junior Emily Dean, Heather Arneson '02 and Nathalie Louge '06. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

By Allegra Giovine '06

Running in through the main doors of Ithaca's Sciencenter, children come to a sudden halt, bewildered by the first major display they see to their right: a finely detailed, totally realistic replica of a machine that is on its way to a Mars landing next January. Jaws drop and awed looks are directed at Matthew Siegler, a recent Cornell graduate and one of the students who helped build the model that soon will be on its way to the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

About a dozen students have worked on the model of the Mars rover since the project began in 2001 with Miles Johnson '02, a research collaborator on the latest Mars mission's Athena science package. Two identical packages of instruments and tools are being carried by the two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

Starting with basic drawings of the rover and few materials other than aluminum, plastic, wood and steel bolts, Johnson directed a student team working out of Cornell repair shops in Clark Hall, the Space Sciences Building and the Emerson Lab in Rhodes Hall. The team began by creating a frame (aluminum covered with Plexiglas), solar panels (aluminum sheets), wheels (wood) and legs, which are "the most impressive but also the most technical parts of the machine," said Johnson.

Because plastic legs couldn't reliably support the weight of the rover model, the team resorted to heavier materials, such as aluminum, and a complex design with many angles. Similarly, the solar panels, which jut out like wings in all directions and gather the solar energy that essentially drives the rover, took much consideration and rethinking about how to hold up large aluminum panels with tiny joints.

The complex design and fragility of the legs and solar panels only meant further obstacles for the team when the rover model took to the road. Between late 2001 and early 2002, the model rover, despite its basic level of completion, was on display for months at a time in museums as far away as Illinois and Vermont. It would return "with some injuries and some repairs that had to be made," said Heather Arneson, also a 2002 Cornell graduate who now is working with the Athena team.

Back at Cornell early this year, a whole new stage of the building process kicked in. Siegler, Ithaca College junior Emily Dean and Cornell student Nathalie Louge '06 essentially took over the project: "We started revamping it because the blueprints for the real rovers kept changing, making ours an older model," said Louge.

The solar panels, in particular, needed to be redone to make them appear thicker, and fine paint and wiring details are also being added to other parts of the rover.

"We've gotten more picky," said Siegler. "Basically, we looked at it and said,'there's no way we can have this thing at the Smithsonian permanently, as inaccurate as it is.'" The rover model made its first visit to the Smithsonian last summer and will be back on display in mid-July.

Siegler and his collaborators say they are putting last minute, "professional" touches on the rover, an attempt to make the replica look "more Smithsonian -- and, hopefully, a little more Mars."